{"id":1749,"date":"2019-11-20T15:00:46","date_gmt":"2019-11-20T22:00:46","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/benjamin-m-weilert.com\/?p=1749"},"modified":"2019-11-16T13:40:43","modified_gmt":"2019-11-16T20:40:43","slug":"book-weapons-of-math-destruction-2016","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/benjamin-m-weilert.com\/index.php\/2019\/11\/20\/book-weapons-of-math-destruction-2016\/","title":{"rendered":"BOOK: Weapons of Math Destruction (2016)"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><span style=\"text-decoration: underline;\"><strong><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"alignleft size-medium\" src=\"https:\/\/i.gr-assets.com\/images\/S\/compressed.photo.goodreads.com\/books\/1475858064l\/32494938.jpg\" alt=\"Weapons of Math Destruction\" width=\"300\" height=\"300\">Weapons of Math Destruction<\/strong><\/span><br \/>\nYear: 2016<br \/>\nAuthor: Cathy O\u2019Neil<br \/>\nLength: 383 minutes \/ 6.38 hours<\/p>\n<p>I love data. I love what it can show us as individuals and what it can show as society changes from year to year. Being able to trend my spending is just as useful to me as knowing how many people are participating in my National Novel Writing Month region. Because I\u2019m always interested in seeing what pure numbers can show me about the world, I was intrigued to find this book,&nbsp;<em>Weapons of Math Destruction<\/em>. While I had already heard many of this book\u2019s conclusions, it was interesting to read about the algorithms that work silently behind the scenes of our society and how nobody can really control or change them.<\/p>\n<p>I\u2019ll agree that it\u2019s terrifying to have decision-making boiled down to a number popped out of an algorithm that decision-makers just blindly trust without understanding the rules of causality or correlation. People are messy, so I understand how finding a single aggregating number to represent an individual is a simple solution. However, I agree with the author\u2019s outrage that these numbers are putting the disenfranchised into a toxic and harmful feedback loop. It\u2019s difficult enough to survive out there without an arbitrary number determining your fate and you having little to no ability to change it. Of course, this point is pounded home about one or two times too many in this book.<\/p>\n<p>From personal experience, I have received a brief glimpse behind the curtain into how these algorithms work. When I got married, I moved from one zip code to another in the same town. At that point, my car insurance premiums suddenly went up. Why? Because I was in a zip code filled with people who were \u201cbad drivers.\u201d Despite nothing about me or my car changing, now I was suddenly a bad driver. I do think there are some substantial reforms needed in these algorithmic systems. Still, I don\u2019t necessarily think the solutions provided by the author are the right answer (they seem mostly based on the author\u2019s personal opinions and biases).<\/p>\n<p>A repetitive look into the dangers of blindly trusting algorithms, I give&nbsp;<em>Weapons of Math Destruction<\/em> 3.5 stars out of 5.<\/p>\n<h2><strong><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"alignnone wp-image-647\" src=\"http:\/\/benjamin-m-weilert.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2017\/10\/255px-Five-pointed_star_svg-150x150.png\" alt=\"255px-Five-pointed_star_svg\" width=\"50\" height=\"50\">&nbsp;<img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"alignnone wp-image-647\" src=\"http:\/\/benjamin-m-weilert.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2017\/10\/255px-Five-pointed_star_svg-150x150.png\" alt=\"255px-Five-pointed_star_svg\" width=\"50\" height=\"50\">&nbsp;<img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"alignnone wp-image-647\" src=\"http:\/\/benjamin-m-weilert.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2017\/10\/255px-Five-pointed_star_svg-150x150.png\" alt=\"255px-Five-pointed_star_svg\" width=\"50\" height=\"50\">&nbsp;1\/2<\/strong><\/h2>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Weapons of Math Destruction Year: 2016 Author: Cathy O\u2019Neil Length: 383 minutes \/ 6.38 hours I love data. I love what it can show us as individuals and what it can show as society changes from year to year. Being able to trend my spending is just as useful to me as knowing how many [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[22,54],"tags":[9,2087,2086,55,2084,2089,2062,8,2085,2088],"class_list":["post-1749","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-3-5-stars","category-book","tag-9","tag-algorithms","tag-big-data","tag-book","tag-cathy-oneil","tag-credit-score","tag-data","tag-review","tag-weapons-of-math-destruction","tag-zip-code"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/benjamin-m-weilert.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1749","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/benjamin-m-weilert.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/benjamin-m-weilert.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/benjamin-m-weilert.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/benjamin-m-weilert.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1749"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/benjamin-m-weilert.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1749\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1751,"href":"https:\/\/benjamin-m-weilert.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1749\/revisions\/1751"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/benjamin-m-weilert.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1749"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/benjamin-m-weilert.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1749"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/benjamin-m-weilert.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1749"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}